Online open text encyclopedia, the quality of whose articles varies widely because the quality of the contributors varies widely. A large number of its two hundred billion trillion articles consist of recycled news releases, wishful thinking masquerading as fact, axe-grinding, and hobbyhorse-riding. On the other hand, some sections include many articles written by people who know what they're talking about.

If you like an encyclopedia which provides hundreds of articles about Canadian television shows, you'll love Wikipedia!

A place where every article has an anime reference, a video game reference, an Internet culture reference, and a "Criticism" section, regardless of the subject. I mean, this is the Internet, after all.

It's surprising that Wikipedia's article on war contains no information about the console wars.

Wikipedia is a great idea in theory, but in practice, most of it's a waste of cyber-ink. It's supposed to be a massive open-source encyclopedia. To its credit, it contains some quirky, interesting information not found anywhere else. However, it also contains factual inaccuracies and political garbage. The bulk of its most influential contributors (the ones with power) are ideological morons, each of whom has to put his/her opinion into every article, even on topics like Norse mythology or basket-weaving. Petty squabbles dominate while factual integrity and cooperative production are made tertiary priorities. The worst aspect of Wikipedia is the "cabal" of like-minded, influential, long-standing contributors who dress their views up as "consensus" and use their sysop privileges to bully anyone who disagrees with them. As an interesting footnote, the encyclopedia was also implicated in a 2004 character assassination effort by a band of anonymous right-wingers against Mike Church.